Merry Christmas, Motherfxxxer
by Pandora Culpa
Summary: AU   Ed has found the most miserable town in existence. And he's stuck in it. And it's all Mustang's fault.


"You're an asshole. You're an asshole, and I hate you, and I hate this fucking shithole of a town you sent me to."

The receiver slammed back into the cradle as Ed hung up, and he growled a few more curses from the sheer momentum of his anger. Of fucking course his asshole boss wasn't available for him to rail at live; instead, he had to content himself with leaving furious messages on Mustang's voicemail. Which wasn't half as satisfying as ripping into the bastard himself, and he suspected that's why Mustang was unavailable tonight. Just to thwart him.

The convention had been a flop. The business opportunities were nonexistent. The agent he'd been sent to speak with had never even shown up and, to add insult to injury, the fucking Greyhound he'd boarded to get the hell out of Dodge had given up the ghost in the shittiest, emptiest, most godforsaken town in the Midwest. And it was all Mustang's fault; Ed was certain of that.

There was nothing out here. The kind of town where even tumbleweeds had enough sense not to pass through, and there was not a goddamn point of even dubious interest within miles. Just the hotel- and it pissed him right the hell off that he should have to be thankful for such a wretched place- and a crappy dive bar beside it. He'd been happy to see that, fuckin' _relieved_...

Until he'd walked over to it, and found a handwritten cardboard sign on the door reading 'Closed for Renervations'.

He'd stared at the sign with a dumbfounded look on his face. What the cockeyed fuck was this? As if 'renervations' (what the hell, were these morons even _literate_?) would do a goddamn thing for a bar in a hole like this. For a moment he'd contemplated the merits of breaking in through one of the shuttered windows; surely there had to be booze of _some_kind hidden inside. But eventually he decided against it; any criminal act would only lead to his being stuck here even longer, and there was no fucking way he could endure that without turning absolutely homicidal.

So he'd trudged back to the hotel, which was thankfully graced by at least the amenity of a phone in his room, and started dialing Mustang's personal number.

The sky outside had a pearly sheen to it, a weird glow that seemed to grow despite the encroaching evening. Bored beyond tears and still mad as hell over being stuck here, Ed wandered over to the window and stared out at the highway. Miles of empty road stretching out toward the horizon, not a headlight to be seen, and he wondered if it was a seasonal thing, or if folks around here were just smart enough to avoid coming through this town on the off chance that they might get stuck here too. As he gazed out the window, a pale flutter glinted in the corner of his eye. Frowning, he searched for the source of the disturbance, and another winked nearby, rapidly followed by a whole swarm of them, swirling out of the sky and Ed bit his lip until he was sure he could taste blood.

Spinning around, he yanked up the phone once again. Punched the numbers in savagely, and waited for the line to connect. "You fucking bastard," he hissed as soon as the recording beeped. "It is now SNOWING on me, and don't EVEN play semantics with me and say that I'm in a hotel, it's not snowing ON me. It is FUCKING SNOWING, and if you don't find some way of getting me OUT of here, SOON, I will make it my life's goal to see that YOU end up stranded out in this goddamn town until the end of time!"

He hoped he hadn't broken the receiver when he threw it down this time. He still had a lot more to say to Mustang; if he broke the phone, the thin tether holding him to sanity would be irreparably shattered, and they may as well lock him up now.

Frustrated, he dropped onto the bed and tried to burn holes in the ceiling with the near-tangible force of his ire. Honestly, what the hell had he done wrong in his life that would lead him to something like this? Especially when Al was home from his studies abroad, probably cooking up a damn storm in the kitchen at this very moment, and wasn't it just like the Bastard to time this stupid trip with his brother's short vacation? It was just another reason he was going to punch Mustang in his damn nose the next time he saw him. He was looking forward to that.

For a while, his mind wandered in pleasant daydreams of rearranging his boss' pretty boy features, maybe making him cry. All of Ed's woes could be laid at his feet anyway, so it wasn't like the shit didn't have it coming anyway. Maybe Al would like to help; it could be a good brotherly bonding experience. The thought made him grin, in spite of his lousy mood.

But he was interrupted from picturing Mustang sniveling and offering to make it up to him by a sound both oddly familiar and slightly hair-raising. For some reason it put him in mind of summers in the country as a kid, playing with Al out at Granny's, in the old barn behind the house...

A dark shape darted around the dresser, and Ed jackknifed onto his knees, staring wide-eyed at the floor with horror. Another shadow scuttled under the window and with a very un-manly shriek, Ed launched from the bed, clearing the seven foot distance to the door with that one bound. He didn't wait to see if anything else moved; he was out into the hall, slamming the door at his back and barreling for the lobby before the echo of his cry had quite died away.

There was only one person working the hotel; an old, wizened fellow whose name tag proclaimed him 'Bubba', and when Ed gasped out his encounter the old man simply nodded, glancing out the front window at the snow, now falling against a deep indigo backdrop. "Weather's turning," he pronounced with all the gravity of a prophet. "Always brings the rats in, where it's warm, see? Don't pay 'em no mind, but y'oughta make sure y'ain't got no food up there. Mebbe sleep with the covers overtop yer head, too."

It was too much. It was officially Too Fucking Much now, and goddamn it all, he was going to have to his pound of flesh before it was over with. Ed stomped back to his room, threw the Gideon's Bible laying on the bedside table at a rat sitting beside the trash can and watching him with beady eyes, and dialed Mustang's number again.

"There. Are. Fucking. Rats," he ground out. "You are so dead when I get back."

He flung the receiver back at the base, not even caring this time if it hit or hung. Jerking his briefcase out from under the bed, he flung it down on the blankets and started unpacking the worthless documents inside. Once it was empty, he swept all the papers into a pile on the floor at the foot of the bed and dug in his pocket until he found a saltwater taffy he'd picked up at one of the vendor stalls at that farce of a convention. Not even bothering to unwrap it, he tossed it into the center of the pile, then settled down on the end of the bed with the open briefcase splayed on his lap.

Fucking Mustang had sent him out here. Fucking Mustang hadn't retrieved him yet. But since Ed was the bigger man and such a nice guy, he was going to bring Fucking Mustang back a souvenir from this descent into hell. He was gonna catch the biggest, meanest goddamn rat he could find, and keep it in his briefcase until he got home and could set it loose in that Bastard's bedroom.

It was only fair.


End file.
